Actually no, I find most people worldwide to have a sense of other people, the history of other nations, other spoken languages, traditions, etc., it has only been in the States do I see this lacking and I'm in NY.
And we're to infer that you have met - and interacted with, to the point of getting a read of the cross-cultural sensitivities of - some statistically significant sample of both the world and US populations?
Not that having a sense of other people is the opposite of ethnocentricism. You can know others intimately, and still insist that your kind is better than theirs. And you can know nothing of others, and still consider them your equals (if a bit vacuously).
Obviously, the inference is supposed to be that people with a less ethnocentric view take more of an interest in other cultures, but I doubt the differences would look so stark, if you were to first account for geography. I.e., Americans, generally, live a long way away from other peoples. It's not like, say, Europe in terms of the distance you have to travel, to encounter another language or culture.
And anyway, there are plenty of examples where the greater cross-cultural knowledge exhibited in a society is itself a product of ethnocentric enterprizes like empire and colonialism. Which is to say that a greater level of familiarity with other cultures, in those instances, is actually a sign of
greater ethnocentricism (at least historically). Again, I'm thinking of Europe here.
Also, do you mean NYC or somewhere else in NY?
